The Cemetery Diaries
Predator and Prey
You’re not the first. I make no secret of that. What happened to my other creations, you ask? I don’t waste words over spilled milk, or spilled blood, for that matter. They died, pure and simple. Some were nipped in the bud, cut down by investigating authorities or the powers that be. Others lived a little while and died by accident. It’s possible to kill a vampire, if you know how. Some prey are more informed than others. Some prey are really predators in disguise.
I shrug deeper into my jacket as you steel yourself against these verbal blows, your skinny body shaking in the wind. Your slender fingers wrap around your upper arms, your elbows find the angle above your hips, and you hug yourself. You wonder, perhaps, why you don’t feel the chill of the night or the chill of the grave. I remind you that you’ll never be buried. The chill of the grave is something you’ll carry inside you from this day forth. The pit they might open, in the new lawn cemetery, when you’ve been missing for so long will be nothing compared with the abyss that opens inside your head. You’ll have to be careful not to tumble into darkness, as your predecessors did.
But there’s no time to talk just now. We’ve reached our destination. Here, where the fountains shatter crystal. Here, where lurking in the night is prohibited by city council signs stuck into the lawn like lollipops, promising fines and arrests. Nowhere is it signposted that worse things than police warnings await the drifters in these parts.
The camouflage of the jungle is big and leafy. A thoroughfare between trees that arch ancient and architectural is the main bypass between quarters of the metropolis, wide enough to permit thirty human beings walking abreast, though in reality there are never more than two people here at once. In the middle of the artificial wilderness, a war memorial rises like an Aztec ruin, a moon-bathed ziggurat, the rectangular pool at the foot of its steps crowded with swans, seagulls and fallen leaves become technicolour boats. Ibises roam along the luxury perimeter, dipping their long and graceful beaks like blackened quills into a well of ink. The pool reflects the sky’s vault, and nothing more. Here, I slam the breaks on, and let the dull thrumming of the engine melt into the oasis of greenery. Above the skyline, the tops of buildings can just be glimpsed, protruding sharply like arrowheads.
Here we are, I say, and help you down from the seat behind me. You brush me away, and I laugh again, my sound puncturing the silence as my teeth so often puncture more tremulous, fearful moments of hush. I think you know why we’ve come to this place, but I ask you anyway. Your answer is simple, tinged with guilt and empathy. To hunt, you say, and you are correct. The truth is still unpleasant to you, I can tell. We wander through the beds of plants and rolling lawns until we find one, a mortal propped up on a park bench, in breach of the law. This place is not a cemetery, but it has the feel of one. Packed air swarms in around our victim, clammy and rattling as death. The deed is quickly done, and you to whom I speak are killer and killed. As successor of both, you survive, emerging bloody and shaken. It’s only to be expected.
Come along, then. I’ll lead you down the boulevard. We’ll go where the heart of the city is, where the steel skyscrapers are needles threading the night, sewing sequins into the sky. Showers of stars like shards of broken glass glitter where they’re strewn, and it’s a water world. The water in the river and the estuary and the water in the faces of buildings together reflect the cryptic, winking heavens. The city is filthy, but there is a kind of melancholy beauty about the harbour, as though it is a basin full of tears. Streams head out to sea, carrying oil and the rest of Sydney’s grief and lifeblood away. The harbour bridge is a dreadful gate, some kind of capsized smile, or a grill of iron teeth shackled to sandstone pillars that are salt-white in the dimness.
We’ll need to find something new for you to wear, and proper sustenance to make you stronger. I start the motorbike up again, leaving smoke where we paused, and we join the roar of the city, the blaring horns and grumbling traffic that never sleeps, just like us. I don’t tell you where we’re going, but I tell you why. You’ve gotten more than you bargained for, more than you could possibly have known. You bit off more than you could chew. Some prey are really predators, but all victims prey on your mind, at first. You’re not the first. That’s just the way it is.
I shrug deeper into my jacket as you steel yourself against these verbal blows, your skinny body shaking in the wind. Your slender fingers wrap around your upper arms, your elbows find the angle above your hips, and you hug yourself. You wonder, perhaps, why you don’t feel the chill of the night or the chill of the grave. I remind you that you’ll never be buried. The chill of the grave is something you’ll carry inside you from this day forth. The pit they might open, in the new lawn cemetery, when you’ve been missing for so long will be nothing compared with the abyss that opens inside your head. You’ll have to be careful not to tumble into darkness, as your predecessors did.
But there’s no time to talk just now. We’ve reached our destination. Here, where the fountains shatter crystal. Here, where lurking in the night is prohibited by city council signs stuck into the lawn like lollipops, promising fines and arrests. Nowhere is it signposted that worse things than police warnings await the drifters in these parts.
The camouflage of the jungle is big and leafy. A thoroughfare between trees that arch ancient and architectural is the main bypass between quarters of the metropolis, wide enough to permit thirty human beings walking abreast, though in reality there are never more than two people here at once. In the middle of the artificial wilderness, a war memorial rises like an Aztec ruin, a moon-bathed ziggurat, the rectangular pool at the foot of its steps crowded with swans, seagulls and fallen leaves become technicolour boats. Ibises roam along the luxury perimeter, dipping their long and graceful beaks like blackened quills into a well of ink. The pool reflects the sky’s vault, and nothing more. Here, I slam the breaks on, and let the dull thrumming of the engine melt into the oasis of greenery. Above the skyline, the tops of buildings can just be glimpsed, protruding sharply like arrowheads.
Here we are, I say, and help you down from the seat behind me. You brush me away, and I laugh again, my sound puncturing the silence as my teeth so often puncture more tremulous, fearful moments of hush. I think you know why we’ve come to this place, but I ask you anyway. Your answer is simple, tinged with guilt and empathy. To hunt, you say, and you are correct. The truth is still unpleasant to you, I can tell. We wander through the beds of plants and rolling lawns until we find one, a mortal propped up on a park bench, in breach of the law. This place is not a cemetery, but it has the feel of one. Packed air swarms in around our victim, clammy and rattling as death. The deed is quickly done, and you to whom I speak are killer and killed. As successor of both, you survive, emerging bloody and shaken. It’s only to be expected.
Come along, then. I’ll lead you down the boulevard. We’ll go where the heart of the city is, where the steel skyscrapers are needles threading the night, sewing sequins into the sky. Showers of stars like shards of broken glass glitter where they’re strewn, and it’s a water world. The water in the river and the estuary and the water in the faces of buildings together reflect the cryptic, winking heavens. The city is filthy, but there is a kind of melancholy beauty about the harbour, as though it is a basin full of tears. Streams head out to sea, carrying oil and the rest of Sydney’s grief and lifeblood away. The harbour bridge is a dreadful gate, some kind of capsized smile, or a grill of iron teeth shackled to sandstone pillars that are salt-white in the dimness.
We’ll need to find something new for you to wear, and proper sustenance to make you stronger. I start the motorbike up again, leaving smoke where we paused, and we join the roar of the city, the blaring horns and grumbling traffic that never sleeps, just like us. I don’t tell you where we’re going, but I tell you why. You’ve gotten more than you bargained for, more than you could possibly have known. You bit off more than you could chew. Some prey are really predators, but all victims prey on your mind, at first. You’re not the first. That’s just the way it is.